"The Milton of poetry is the man, in his own magnificent
phrase, of devout prayer to that eternal spirit that can enrich with all
utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire
of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases." [2] And if
from one point of view Poetry brings home to us the immeasurable
inequalities of different minds, on the other hand it teaches us that
genius is no affair of rank or wealth.
"I think of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul, that perish'd in his pride;
Of Burns, that walk'd in glory and in joy
Behind his plough upon the mountain-side." [3]
A man may be a poet and yet write no verse, but not if he writes bad or
poor ones.
"Mediocribus esse poetis
Non homines, non Di, non concessere columnae." [4]
Second-rate poets, like second-rate writers generally, fade gradually into
dreamland; but the great poets remain always.
Poetry will not live unless it be alive, "that which comes from the head
goes to the heart;" [5] and Milton truly said that "he who would not be
frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought
himself to be a true poem.
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